In Shattered Filipino City, A Fight For ‘Sheer Survival’

In anguish: Tears ran down the cheeks of a man as he waited with other survivors Tuesday for a flight out of Tacloban, the Philippines, which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

(We updated at 10:40 a.m. ET to include the latest official death toll of more than 2,300.)

As some trucks loaded with food and other aid arrive in the Philippines city of Tacloban they’re being looted by residents struggling to survive in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn said Wednesday on Morning Edition.

He’s spoken with many of those people and they seem to be “ordinary folks who would not do such things in ordinary times,” Anthony told host Steve Inskeep. “But they are doing such things to stay alive.”

In Tacloban, he added, a fight for “sheer survival” is under way as people in the city of more than 220,000 search for food, water and other essentials. As of Wednesday, there weren’t enough government troops in the area to control things.

“TACLOBAN, the Philippines — The mayor of this typhoon-ravaged city urged residents on Wednesday afternoon to flee to other cities and find shelter there with relatives if they could, saying that the local authorities were struggling to provide enough food and water and faced difficulties in maintaining law and order.”

While the government, international aid groups and foreign militaries that have rushed to the affected area are having trouble getting to the victims because of blocked roads, the U.S. commander on the scene told NPR early Wednesday that American assistance has quickly ramped up.

Marine Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy said that “this disaster is 5 days old for the people of the Philippines, [but] we’ve effectively only had U.S. military operations for the last 72 hours. And in 72 hours we’ve gone from essentially a cold start — I flew in here with 6 people and a suitcase staff — to running … aircraft. We moved 65 tons of humanitarian assistance supplies yesterday. That’s a lot of stuff. We’ll do the same today.”

NPR’s coverage of the typhoon is collected here. For another view of how desperate things are in some places, see our post from Tuesday: